12 SAF (Singapore Armed Force) servicemen ended up with minor injuries after two Hunter tanks collided in a military exercise in Australia.
The accident occurred at Shoalwater Bay Training Area yesterday evening, 24 September, at around 7:40 pm Australia time (5:40 pm Singapore time).
As the vehicles were moving back to the base during Exercise Wallaby, one Hunter Armoured Fighting Vehicle (AFV) rear-ended another. The Hunter AFV vehicle holds a three-man crew and can carry up to eight additional troops.
Introduced in 2019, this tank is a modern replacement for the SAF’s older fleet of Ultra M113 AFVs. It even comes with digital touchscreen interfaces.
The advanced technology, however, couldn’t prevent the accident that followed. This fender bender resulted in 12 Singaporean servicemen being airlifted to Rockhampton Airport by military helicopters.
They were then sent to the Rockhampton Hospital around 8.30 pm Australia time, according to the Queensland Ambulance Service (QAS).
No Australian servicemen or vehicles were involved in the accident. MINDEF has confirmed that the injured Singaporeans “are currently being treated or recovering well”.
MINDEF has also come out to say that the exercise has been paused. “The safety and well-being of our people is of paramount importance. The Army has called for a safety pause to remind drivers to maintain proper distance. MINDEF/SAF wish the servicemen a speedy recovery.”
Exercise Wallaby
Introduced in 1990, Exercise Wallaby is the SAF’s largest unilateral overseas military exercise, lasting 9 weeks in the Shoalwater Bay Training Area of Queensland, Australia.
This year, the exercise runs from 8 September to 3 November, and will involve over 6,200 personnel and 490 military vehicles, aircraft and other major equipment.
The exercise typically includes personnel from the Singapore Army, RSAF, Digital and Intelligence Service (DIS), and the Australian armed forces.
Why Shoalwater Bay? Its huge open land and air space (nearly 5x the area of our tiny island) gives the SAF the chance to do large-scale training that just isn’t possible in Singapore’s smaller, urban city-like setting.
Earlier this year, the training area even underwent an expansion, allowing the SAF to “increase the scale of Exercise Wallaby by close to 50%, with an increase in training duration from six weeks to nine weeks”, according to Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen
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